


Family Snaps

by asparagusmama



Series: Tales of the companions [4]
Category: Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Gender Confusion, Loss, Memories, Slight Canon Divergence, body confusion, mentions of many companions, mentions of some ships, post regeneration confusion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 07:35:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27180005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asparagusmama/pseuds/asparagusmama
Summary: Sleepless with grief, Graham goes to see if the Doctor is awake. He asks about her species and past, and is surprised to find her in a sharing mood.Set (and written ) in early Season 11 so ignores later revelations like the Fam not believing she was once a he, or not knowing her species, and of course, ignoring season 12's big timeless child reveal.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor & Graham O'Brien
Series: Tales of the companions [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1186406
Kudos: 22





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This has sat in a yellow longhand A4 pad for a long time, over a year, in my wheelchair backpack. I am currently trying to write a 1000 words a day, so on days I can't think through brain fog or stress or pain, I am copying all the longhand creations I used to write sitting in a café on my few days out of the house in the olden days, before I became a prisoner due to the extra effort to get out of the house and keep myself safe along with shielding. Anyway, I dedicate it to everyone, wherever you are, also struggling with this new normal of the pandemic however it has affected you. As I was mostly housebound, as ill, anyway, I feel I shouldn't moan about never being able to go out!

Graham knocked gently on what he presumed was the Doctor’s bedroom door.

Did she even sleep?

The lights were on and the door swung open. It was a large room, with old-fashioned oak furniture. A train set seemed to be covering most of the floor, going under the bed and the dressing tables as if they were tunnels. A tiny steam train was currently puffing its way out from the bed, another was waiting at a tiny station the other side of the room, and a third was a diesel train, travelling in the opposite direction to the first stream train. He could not see the Doctor at first, the room being L-Shaped, the bottom of the L hidden from the doorway.

“Doc?” Graham called. “You in there? Can I come in?” Graham called, stepping carefully over narrow-gauge tracks and miniature trains. “Oh, jeez! Sorry!” he let out, shielding his eyes and turning his back.

The Doctor was wearing equally old-fashioned men’s blue and white striped pyjamas, far too big for her, and standing in front of a full-length mirror, staring at herself. Except she had lifted the top and pulled down the bottoms and seemed to be examining herself with clinical curiosity and detachment.

“Sorry. Dressed now,” she said. “Thank you for being a gentleman. If that’s the right thing to say? I mean you did walk in my bedroom.”

“Sorry Doc, but I did knock. And call out.”

“So you did.” The Doctor beamed. “I was distracted. It’s all these new bits. Can’t get used to them. Worst thing is micturition, keep forgetting to sit and it all runs down my legs. Do I smell of wee? I do hope I don’t smell of wee. You’d all tell me if I smelt of wee, wouldn’t you? Or would you just think my species was meant to smell of wee? I do keep instant wash wipes with me, just in case. Should I have said all that? Probably not. You looked shocked! Should not have said that…”

Graham thought she looked very worried. Not her ‘oh dear, we’re in the wrong time again and now we need to save these people/get the TARDIS back/get time back on track/escape this cell and prove we did not do it’ worried. That kind of worried look on the Doc was fine, it meant she would work it all out then everything would be fine, she would work out what to do to save the day. No, this was more of a ‘have I done/said something stupid again to offend or confuse my friend’ worried. He didn’t know what to do, or say, as frankly, yes, the Doctor babbling about wetting herself was way too much information.

While he was wondering what Grace would say, the Doctor went on, “Do you like my train set? I haven’t had it out since my Seventh Persona – that is body. He loved it. I could be very dark then. But I – he – I would play with this. I’m thinking this time of making an entire room and building much more. Little towns and villages and cities, tiny trees and animals. What do you think? Isn’t it cool?” her face fell, reacting to Graham’s confused face. “Or not cool? Is it sad? Ace said it was well sad. Or is it not appropriate now? Don’t girls play with train sets? Are they not allowed to?”

Graham found his voice. “For one, of course girls can play with train sets, one of my nieces used to. Sure, in some societies and times, on Earth, they used to say rubbish about girls not being able to do this or that, but that was about stopping girls being awesome, not anything to do with what a girl can really do. But you’re not from Earth, are you, and while I think of it, trains are from Earth. I won’t get myself sidetracked by asking of there are trains on other planets. Which brings me to my other answer, you are not a girl at all, Doctor, not really even a woman, more some giant alien power squashed down to look like a woman. You’re an alien, completely alien. You never really tell us though, do you, you never explain. Were you really a man? Or lots of different men? How? Are you really thousands of years old? And if you are serious, in all that time, have you really only been male? Are you telling the truth with every flippant remark Doc, because you see, really I find it all hard to get my head around.”

“I think I’ve always been male. I remember deciding I was a little girl and started wearing Time Lady robes and growing my hair, as a young Time Tot, but I think, under the robes, there were boy bits still. Does that make sense?”

Nothing about the Doctor made sense, from the moment she fell through the sky from space, so she claimed, and smashed through the roof of the train he’d been on, and had babbled about being a man and then took over dealing with what was happening in terms of aliens and death. Always death. But Graham didn’t think she wanted to hear that. He struggled to find a word she had used then, talking to Grace, explaining the light which she had breathed out while she slept.

“You – regenerate? That’s the word you used. You talk about becoming new, not knowing who you are. But you’re you – aren’t you?”

“Sort of. Yeah. It’s confusing.” She nodded furiously, smiling all the while, giving off quite crazy, contradictory vibes. Graham questioned his own sanity yet again for travelling with her. The grief must make him mad, he decided. She went on, “I think I get more confused than others of my species do, really. Might be because I’m always doing it alone, away from home, often – mostly really – in an emergency. But back home, a lot of teachers, and my family, didn’t have much of an opinion of my abilities really, so maybe I’m just bad at it?”

“You seem clever enough to me Doc,” Graham felt some reassurance must be in order, and wondered how clever the rest of her people must be, and who were her people, why did she never talk of them or tell them even the name of her planet? It wasn’t like she came from Mars or something, they wouldn’t even have heard of it, whatever her planet was called, but a name to what she was and where she came from would be kind of comforting, reassuring, something. For all they knew, she could be a criminal among her own people. “But, and I know I’m just a thick human, you, the thing that makes you you, in your mind, brain, soul, whatever, stays the same, right? You might have temporarily forgot you were called the Doctor, but you don’t have to – I don’t know, die, change sex and get reborn to do that? People who are injured do that. Trauma.”

“Trauma,” the Doctor repeated, rolling the word around and grinning. “Yeah, I like that.”

“Bonkers you are, no one likes trauma, do they?”

The Doctor grinned more widely, then frowned. “I am the Doctor, but I don’t stay the same. It’s who I am and who I was and who I will be, and that stays the same. It’s just my personality gets jumbled up and settles in a different order. It’s all there, but bits come to the front and others go to the back. I might be more scientific, or brave, or noble, or pragmatic, more empathetic or a bit socially awkward – it’s all there, but, different. I can see by your face I’m not making sense.” The Doctor sat down dejectedly on her bed.

“That’s because I only know you now, Doctor. I can’t imagine you like an old, white haired man, like you said you were – Scottish or otherwise (and that doesn’t make sense, how can you be Scottish when you’re not human) - before you fell through the roof of our train.”

The Doctor’s face lit up again, her moods were so mercurial, they were hard to keep up with. “Oh!” she practically yelled, standing up, and beaming from ear to ear. “I have pictures! Lots of them! I can show you pictures of me – all of me! Would that help? Clara and I did that, although she also recognised me, but that was complicated. I did it with Donna, she did make me laugh, she was so rude! And Ace. Oh, and so many other friends! Should have done with Rose, really...” the Doctor looked momentarily sad… and then, like the sun coming out from behind a cloud, she was smiling again. “Shall I show you? There’s a box somewhere!” She dropped to the floor and began wriggling under the bed.

“I’d like that Doctor. But maybe we’ll take it to the kitchen, look at them over a pot of tea, and maybe a ginger snap of two. I shouldn’t be in here, should I, your boudoir, as you pointed out...”

“Oh?” the Doctor said, head popping out from under the bed, obviously forgotten that Graham had come into her room uninvited and she had chastised him. “Because I’m female you mean? It doesn’t work like that. Does it? On my home, we were always so boring and correct, it probably did.” She wriggled out and stood up, a silver metal box decorated with circular patterns, like Celtic or Scottish or Pictish standing stones, Graham thought, trying to remember which it was, and what documentary he had seen with designs like that thousands of years old all over the stones. Perhaps it was just the Doctor’s graffiti? He wouldn't put it past her. Or him. Them. Whatever.

She put the box on the bed and ran her hands through her hair, ruffling it, and smiled again. “Very correct, they were. I kind of hated it. More than hated it. Was always in trouble too. But gender had nothing to do with it. You’d just have to be married to be in a bedroom together, and your parents would have to approve of who you married. Or even chose. Unless you were a child, then your parents or nurse or tutor could come in. I’m babbling. That’s what I do now, I babble. Or I think I do. Do I babble?”

It was Graham’s turn to smile. “I think you probably always did, Doc. Shall we?” He picked up the box and gestured to the door, and the kitchen and tea and biscuits beyond.

“Are you being a gentleman now? Because I’m a woman? Would you do that if I was a man?”

Graham liked to think he was helpful and kind to anyone, and was also bisexual, wondered, and replied, “Probably. Maybe. I don’t know. Why, don’t you like it?”

The Doctor grinned widely. “I think I like it. But I would have done if I was a man too. From you, that is. Not everyone. I don’t like to be patronised.”

“No one could ever do that, Doc,” Graham said, but the Doctor looked unhappy again, as the shadows chased across her face. “Come on, let’s get than tea made and you can show me what’s in here.” He lifted the box and waggled it about.

“Okay. But custard creams.”

“And ginger snaps,” Graham added.

“And Jammy Dodgers,” the Doctor replied.

“And we will be as fat as whales,” Graham said, mildly. But he had lost so much weight under chemo, his oncologist didn’t mind him eating the odd packet of biscuits in one sitting, and he was sure the Doctor burnt off sugar like a car burnt petrol, or a steam engine burnt coal, he amended as one of the Doctor’s miniature toy trains puffed under his legs.


	2. Black and white stills

They debated for some time on what tea to make, and the Doctor eventually found something called Raspberry Pop, and they decided a fruit tea might be better than tannins and caffeine from the Lapsang Souchong of the Doctor's first choice, or the Assam, which had been Graham’s.

Graham found a packet of custard creams, and one of Hobnobs, but no ginger snaps or Jammy Dodgers, and put them on a plate in the middle of the table, while the Doctor poured the tea into pretty bone China willow patterned teacups.

“Right,” she said, after dunking a custard cream and expertly getting it in her mouth before the soggy end fell off in a dissolved goo over her red satin dressing gown. “Photos. Pictures. Happy family snaps.” And she opened the box.

“This is me soon after I ran away – um, left Gallifrey.”

“Gallifrey?”

“My planet.”

“Ah, Gallifrey,” Graham repeated, as if he had heard of it before, so not to alarm her for letting the cat out of the bag, as it were. She had always changed the subject when Yaz or Ryan asked over the last few weeks.

“I think it’s about 1830, India,” the Doctor explained, pointing at the sepia photograph. “This is Susan, my granddaughter. She cut her hair soon after that. She found the box brownie, too. The photo was taken by Siger Holmes, the explorer. Splendid chap. You might have heard of his son? Anyway, Susan wanted to settle down and go to school. Not in British Raj India, oh no, but 1960s London. Swinging she called it. She got her hair cut to go to that school. I don’t know why!”

Graham tried to absorb all the information with no comment, in case this much wanted big reveal the insomniac hyperactive Doctor might suddenly end. Instead, he offered, “Maybe she just wanted to hang with some other teenagers. She looks, what – fourteen?”

The Doctor flapped a hand. “We age differently. That school caused me no end of trouble. In several time periods. It was safe for Susan, thankfully. And here we are.” The Doctor placed a second picture alongside the first. Both had the same girl, both were black and white, or perhaps the first brown and beige would be more accurate, and both also had the same elderly man. In the first photo the girl was wearing a long, checked dress and smock, her hair long and loose, standing stiffly next to the white-haired old man, who had a cane and checked trousers. A very typical Victorian photograph, except Graham wasn’t sure when cameras were invented. They were somewhere hot and tropical, by some large flowers growing in clumps, and the open sky behind them. The second photo also had two other people, a man and a woman, and the girl now had short hair cut with a sixties sharp Elfin haircut, the kind his Mum had when she got married, and wore a pinafore dress to the knees. The man wore the same, except he now wore and odd shaped hat and a striped scarf – in fact, it was hard to tell, the stripes being the monochrome of the black and white photograph, but Graham was sure he had seen the Doctor wear that scarf, or one very similar. The younger man had drainpipe trousers, a shirt and a narrow tie, and a neat quiff, looking like he belonged in the early sixties doing something respectable. As did the woman, in her knee length skirt, blouse and cardigan and flat smart shoes. They stood on a rocky outcrop in what looked like savannah.

“Who are they?”

“Barbara and Ian. Barbara Wright and dear old Chatterton – Chesterfield. Um… he’s Mr Barbara Wright now, anyway. They travelled with me. Don’t worry, I’ll get you back to Sheffield a lot faster than I got them home. I know what I’m doing in the TARDIS now. In theory.”

“Sure about that Doc?”

“Yes! I panicked! They were my first passengers – companions – friends – fam. Susan was so advanced, so clever, they got suspicious and I – er – um – h’m – well, I kidnapped them. Accidentality! Then, as I had um, stolen the TARDIS and couldn’t quite… yes, well, they… In the end, they took a ship from the… they took a time ship and found their way home without me. Turned out it was a good thing, I found out centuries later, Barbara was pregnant. They got married and had John Chesterton. Chesterton! That’s it!”

“Wait? They’re Jonny Chess’s parents? I loved his band, was a right punk as a nipper.” Graham looked up, and saw, despite her joy at remembering Ian's surname, she was looking lost and sad. He put his hand on her arm.

“Alright?”

She shook herself visibly and beamed. “Oh. Fine. Absolutely. Yes. Daleks. Evil things. Don’t want to talk about them. Don’t ask.”

“I won’t,” Graham promised.

“Barbara and Ian stole the Dalek time ship to get home in the end, as I said. By then my own dear Susan has also left me.”

“She grew up and flew the nest, we all do Doc,” Graham said, for want of something to do or say, as the Doctor has fallen silent and was staring at the pictures of her granddaughter. Now he thought of it, there was a framed one by her bed, he had noticed without registering it, in a funky sixties hat, looking much older, almost in her twenties. There had been four more, but he couldn’t remember the faces now. Perhaps they would come to them. He patted the Doctor’s arm. “Alright then?” he asked.

“The Daleks,” she replied morosely. “There they are again. They’d invaded Earth. Oh, don’t worry,” she said, waving a hand and her mood picking up again, “it’s a long time in the future, at least 140 years from you and your time, and I dealt with them. But Susan was an adult by then, and looking to put down roots, and wanted to stay and help with the Earth and the Solar Republic’s reconstruction. Besides, she had fallen in love. But she felt such loyalty to me…! I let her go. I promised to go back, one day... yes, one day…”

“Is she happy?” Graham asked.

“I… don’t know. There was a war, with my people and… the Time War. The Daleks. I don’t really know about my family anymore. Or which timeline they exist in. It gets complex when you travel in time...”

Graham squeezed the Doctor’s shoulder. “But she was happy, I’m sure. Is that really you, that old man?”

“Oh yes, I know I look old, but in reality, I was so young, so so young. That’s my loom body, my first, the one I was kind of born in, but not the way you humans are. It’s complicated. That body was already wearing a bit thin when I ran away, but I was so scared to regenerate. I didn’t know what would happen, so far from home.”

The Doctor pulled out another photo, before Graham could ask more questions. “After Susan left, Barbara, Ian and I found Vicki. Her ship has crashed, her father was dead, the only other survivor was a madman. She’d made an indigenous reptile a pet, whom Barbara accidentality killed. A curious child, a fighter and survivor, a child after my own hearts. When I lost her, when she left me, to step into history, I was so proud… of course, I’d not read the Odysseus or Iliad then… now, I feel so guilty, so so guilty...”

“Why Doc? I don’t know Greek myths as well as I should, I guess… She was human then? She looks so young.”

The Doctor stared for a moment, and stroked the face of the picture of the child, Vicki. “Yes, she was. From the twenty sixth century. She left me, as I said, and stepped right into History. Became Cassandra, at Troy. I didn’t know… Poor Katerina joined us there, suffering I now understand from PTSD. The horrors inflicted on the women of Troy, I didn’t see, didn’t notice, I was an ignorant MALE alien!”

The Doctor stood up and began to pace, pulling at her hair. “I’m so ashamed. Katerina thought me a god, the TARDIS a flying temple, and she sacrificed… Poor girl died, Daleks. Again. This is becoming monotonous. And I need to do something, I need to stop… Did I have to become female to realise what I did leaving Vicki, I...”

The Doctor ran out of the kitchen, heading for the console room. Graham caught her, held her by her wrists, as she was pulling her hair too hard.

“Hush. Calm down Doc. Let’s have some more tea, okay, and you can tell me more about your friends. Then we’ll work out what to do.”

The Doctor struggled again Graham, and pulled away, and hugged herself. A sly, clever look fell over her face.

“Alright, after all, this is a time machine. But she isn’t behaving. Probably end up in a refugee camp in the 2020s and catch Covid rather than end up in tenth century BC City of Troy, and who knows what will happen to you, despite all the nanites...”

“The what now?”

“Like vaccines, Gallifreyan nanites, have you never wondered why you, Ryan, and Yaz never get sick, when or wherever we are?”

“Can you aliens stop putting things in me without my consent! Come on, let’s make some fresh tea.” He led her unresisting back into the kitchen, pushing her into her chair and putting on the kettle. Raspberry Pop had a twin, Blackcurrant Pop, so Graham made that, while the Doctor sat at the table, eating three custard creams at a time, crammed into her mouth, muttering about timing it right not to muck up history, impersonating Athena and someone called Bernice, while spraying crumbs over the table. Graham got a cloth and wiped it down while she muttered, and the water boiled for the tea.

Once the tea was poured, the Doctor has shrugged off her weird reaction, and summarised, sadly, “Daleks, they killed poor little innocent Katerina, and Sara Kingdom too, a few days later. I have no pictures of either of them. My poor Steven was so bereft – good word that, bereft. He was falling in love with Sara. Bloody Daleks!”

“Hey, hey,” Graham stilled the Doctor’s shaking hands with his, but she pulled them away, and shook them more deliberately and glared. “Who was Steven?” he asked her to distract her.

“Steven. Steven Taylor.” The Doctor pulled out another picture. “Isn’t he handsome? I thought so. But I was so, so old-looking, he wouldn’t look at me.”

“How did you meet?”

“Well, we were… that is they – the Daleks – were chasing us and he’d been imprisoned and...”

“Okay,” Graham said swiftly, not knowing or understanding who or what these Daleks were, and forbidden from asking, but not really caring other than they made the Doctor distressed and unhappy. “How did he leave?” he asked, hoping the Daleks – or death or implied rape – had nothing to do with his departure.

The Doctor smiled like a proud parent. “He left to arbitrate, to rebuild a collapsed civilisation, split into two factions. I was so proud of him. And this is Dodo – Dorothy Chaplet.” the Doctor pulled out another photo from the silver box. “I sort of accidentally abducted her. She burst into the TARDIS after a row with Steven, and I was so worried he would leave again, and doesn’t she look like my Susan?”

Graham nodded, she did indeed. He laid them out. Each photo had the Doctor and her, or rather, his friend, or granddaughter in one case. In each photo the Doctor’s clothes were similar and his hair the same, and actually, as he looked, quite similar to the Doctor’s hair now. “And it’s really you?” he clarified.

The Doctor nodded, frowning. “I don’t know why I keep telling you these things. I’d thought I’d forgotten them centuries ago.”

“Because you are distracting me in my grief for Grace, Doctor,” Graham offered, although truth be told, yes, he missed Grace like a limb, and even breathing hurt knowing she was gone, yet he knew, from the loss of his parents and his old school friend who had died in a car crash years ago, you learnt to live with the pain. The Doctor had so much more grief – she had lived, she claimed, thousands of years, and yet had human friends, and tried to forget rather than live with the grief. Still, telling her she needed to share would probably shut her down, and he was interested. Very interested indeed.

“Am I?” she asked, sounding confused. “Oh. Good. Look, here is me, on Vulcan-”

“Vulcan?!” Graham interrupted, shocked, “You mean, like Mr Spock?”

“No no,” the Doctor said, waving her hands, sounding a bit miffed at the interruption. “I know of at least three Vulcans in your galaxy alone – this one, colonised by humans in your future, the planet of gold, and yes, strangely, and I do not know how Mr Gene Roddenbury knew of them, yes, the one from the TV show! Or quite similar anyway. Certainly, green blooded and logical. Anyway, I was trying to tell you – the picture was taken just after we defeated the – oh! Again! The Daleks. Darkness and Light. Friendships and Destruction. The Doctor and the Daleks. Story of my life, or lives, I guess.”

“No prizes for guessing when she comes from,” Graham said, picking up the picture. “Looks like a model, a sixties icon.”

“Polly? Yes, she was glamorous. That’s Ben. A sailor. I think they were in love. Barbara and Ian were. They married when they got back to Earth. Oh, I said that! Polly and Ben didn’t though. Are Ryan and Yaz going to fall in love?”

Graham laughed. “I doubt it. I don’t know. How should I know? I hope not, for Ryan’s sake, to be honest. I mean, I don’t know anything about Yaz’s family, but I know they wouldn’t like their daughter dating a black man. Or dating at all. Or being with a woman, and to be honest, she looks at you far more than Ryan.”

The Doctor ignored the comment about her and Yaz, and asked, “Why? I mean – really? After what we did, making sure Rosa sat on that bus...”

“Different country Doc, different culture, different religion, different histories. Should be fine in Britain, I mean it is, it is fine in Britain. I should know, look at me and Grace. Yaz is Muslim. And British Pakistani. They don’t marry non-Muslims, and they shouldn’t date, and Pakistanis marry who their parents approve off, however progressive and modern and British, and for Yaz to be in the police, they have to be all that. Plus, most people from the Indian Subcontinent in the UK – or anywhere I guess - can be horrendously racist to the black communities. Complex, and heart break for Ryan, or Yaz, as she would have to choose him or family. If they fell in love, which I don’t think will happen. So all is good, I think Yaz has an entire other Islam verses fighting with her feelings issues really.”

“I don’t really understand all this inter-breed attitudes, really, and there are lots of African Muslims, so… but of course, Ryan isn’t. I do respect Yaz’s beliefs, but it if makes things hard for her, I don’t understand.”

Graham shrugged, “Just the way things are in Yorkistan,” he joked. “Keep themselves to themselves,” he said in a bad Yorkshire accent. “In London, it’s different, in Essex, where I’m from, the racism comes from the whites, not that it doesn’t happen in Yorkshire too from white racists as well, don’t get me wrong. And no, I don’t get it either. I like you said breed, coz we are all the human race, right?”

“Exactly.” The Doctor made a scoffing noise, and repeated, “Just how things are in Yorkshire. That’s what they said in Alabama.”

“It’s different Doc, it’s a group of people who suffered terrible racism when they arrived in the sixties and things never got much better, they just retreated into themselves. That’s not the same as white privilege turned into actual laws, is it? I’m not defending them, just saying it’s different. Why didn’t Polly and Ben work out?” he changed the subject, it was getting awkward and painful. How did you explain English classism and racism to an alien? You couldn’t.

The Doctor frowned, and said sadly, “Oh, well, if I were to guess, it would be because Polly was a lady and a model and Ben a working-class lad who was a merchant seaman. Once they got back home, the class barrier was just too great.”

Maybe she did get it, just not all the colours and creeds of it. “Because it was just the way things were to them,” Graham said sagely, nodding.

The Doctor glared, annoyed, hoist by her own petard as it were, then shook off her annoyance at her new companion, and took out some more handfuls of pictures, and seeing the top photo, beamed sadly. She lay the first picture down on the table in front of Graham. “This,” she said proudly, “is me and Jamie.” 

Graham instantly recognised the young man from another of the photos beside the Doctor’s bed.

She began to lay them down, like dealing cards for solitaire, one beside the next, in a row. “Me, Jamie, and Polly and Ben, Me, Jamie, and Victoria. Me, Jamie, and Zoe.” She laid the last one, a colour one, down with a flourish. “Jamie and my wedding,” she announced, startling Graham with the surprising information.

“Wait. What?” Graham studied the pictures harder. The new-look Doctor had dark hair in a Beatle moptop cut, trousers too short – although not as short as she wore them now – a scruffy jacket too big, a large stovepipe hat in one of the pictures, and a top hat in the wedding one, although that seemed to be the only concession made to it being his wedding, the rest of the clothes remained the same. He looked more like a mismatched clown than she did now, and Graham, if he had thought about it, would have not thought that possible up to now. He had already seen Polly and Ben, so assumed they must have been there when she, he meant he, had, what was it, regenerated? 

Jamie was a young man, red headed, sturdy, always dressed in a kilt, full ruffled shirt, waistcoat and sporran for the wedding, overwise just a shirt or a top, and boots with a knife, or dirk Graham supposed. Victoria and Zoe were both more teenaged girls, although as alike as from chalk and cheese. Victoria wore a simple cotton dress to her knees, and had beautiful long hair, whereas Zoe was in a tight catsuit and had a sleek, dark, smooth bob. Victoria looked uncertain and shy, Zoe looked like she might know more than the Doctor, or thought she did, like the cat who had got the cream.

“Victoria’s father was killed by Daleks. I promised him Jamie and I would look after her. She was Victorian, but I found her a family to live with in the 1980s. Zoe was from your century, although much later, the other end of it. She was living on a space station, she stowed away in the TARDIS. Jamie’s a Highlander, from the eighteenth century, I met him after the Battle of Culloden, when the English were mopping up, showing no mercy whatsoever. He was a McCrimmon, Piper to the Clan. I lost him. That is, he was taken from me. Zoe too. The Time Lords, my people –”

“What Doc?” Graham asked, not bearing the pain on the Doctor’s face.

“They took them away, put them back in time the moment after I first met them. Wiped their memories, wiped all Jamie had learnt and accomplished. Everything!”

Graham looked again at the photos, at the man in the kilt. “Your husband?” he clarified. “They took him away?”

“They took everything from him, not just me. Science. Maths. Education. The ability to read! Hygiene. He was raised in a croft, a Highlander from so long ago to you. He was illiterate. He learnt so fast once he could read, everything, he spent hours in the library and asking questions, he was so bright, so clever, and they took it all, even his own understanding of his own nature – he’d have forgotten me, married a lass, had bairns and never understood why he couldn’t quite love his wife as he should.” The Doctor hung her head, and put her arms over her head, and let out an anguished sob. “I try not to think of it, I don’t know why I’m telling you Graham, I really don’t. Or, even why I let you call me Doc – I’ve never let anyone call me Doc before.”

“Do you want me to stop?” Graham asked, mortified.

The Doctor shook her head.

“Why?” Graham asked, trying to distract her, trying to bring her back into focus, trying to understand. “Why did they take him away from you?”

“To punish me, it was punishment for my lesser crime, one of marrying another species. My main crime, interfering, saving people, fighting injustice – for that, they forcibly regenerated me.”

“You mean they killed you?”

The Doctor nodded, then grinned. “As you can see, I learnt my lesson and never interfered or got involved ever again.”

Graham tried not to laugh, but failed. “Yeah, yeah, I see how that worked.”

“More tea?” the Doctor asked brightly, leaping up and knocking her chair over


End file.
